Templesmith Choker? Cool Variant. McCool.
It’s been a minute since my last post, and my only excuse is that a lot of behind-the-scenes BSC business has been going down on top of the day-to-day operation. We have a lot of moves going on, and hopefully we are a site closer to Cobra Island development status. On the collection tip, things have been slow, as while I’ve queried a bunch of artists for various commissions, they are either too busy or not answering email (yet are twittering…a lot). I’ve also struck out on some pages artists’ no longer had. Should be picking up here regardless though because my portfolios came in and I figure I’ll snap a pic and tackle them soon. Because they are just being put away in portfolio, it’s a lot of my recent stuff that’s probably been posted in various communities I frequent. Might still be semi-interesting though, because while going through them being reminded of them, I was thinking about the why behind the purchases. A lot of it is rather inexpensive and oddball, but I found that I was still rather aware at why I pulled the trigger on the items at the time. Also nice mini-surprises like seeing on one of my Dave Lapham (from Harbinger-lovely pre-Unity) pages, a sketch included that I hadn’t noticed before–stuff like that. It’s not blow your mind shit, but more exposing odd thought processes that make us pull the trigger on auctions. For this post though, I have an example of one of the aspects I touched on in Variety, Trade, or Death (or No Hooks, Chum).
Deathmate Grail Hate
I think I reflect on Deathmate a bit differently than most, or rather most will now admit. Don’t get me wrong, it was a terribly executed piece of shit: scheduling, timing, story, art (in most cases)–it ended up being a complete disaster. The crossover between Image and VALIANT – the latter being a publisher that pulled off what I think was the best “event/crossover” in the history of the medium (Unity) – was an abysmal creative failure, and to some, the event is the marker for when market really went to hell–a decline that’s never been recovered from (for a variety of reasons, none of which has to do with comics, because I firmly believe that the best comics – as a whole – are being produced now). You’ll be able to read stories about the process involved in making this crossover work at several places online, from it being shoved down creator’s throats by brass, to camping at Liefeld’s house until he finished his contribution, and so on, but I’m not going to get into all of the gossip. I don’t really care whose fault it was, I just read and buy comics.
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